the immortal sea
spread like snow
white caps of salt
and seaweed
walking the carpet
of a white beach
dreaming of flying
imagine the white
endlessness
the clean swatch
of infinity
waves of salt
returning the white
water to the white
sands, the ocean’s
immortality

Like this:

Sometimes I play around with different ways to present the same words on the page. This is a redo just out of curiosity to see how it works in block format rather than more traditional lines. If you’re interested in seeing the original, you can find it here. I realized I haven’t really shared much here lately, but I have been working on some things, but not ready to show the newest projects yet. So I think I’ll just starting showing some of my “process” of writing the assorted things I’m messing around with these days.

inspired

neither god nor muse on a train in a nasty mood coming from the outside from the inside the source is unimportant the poet is the poet is the real thing Yeats is Spicer’s ghost father the poem drives the poet parasite dictating to us (the Martian) Yeats’ wife possessed by spooks “I’m here to give you metaphors”

Like this:

neither god nor muse
on a train
in a nasty mood
coming from the outside
from the inside
the source is unimportant
the poet is the poet
is the real thing
Yeats is Spicer’s
ghost father
the poem drives
the poet
parasite dictating
to us (the Martian)
Yeats wife possessed
by spooks
“I’m here to give you
metaphors”

Like this:

But I’m not ready to go home yet.
“But you can’t stay here forever.”I know. But I’m not ready.

I don’t even know what ready means, or what ready looks like, or how ready feels. I just know that this is not ready. Thoughts of returning to the same circumstances that sent me to the hospital in the first place bring on panic attacks. I don’t think that’s ready. When I can’t stop crying whenever I think of going home, I don’t think that’s ready, either. When I shake so much I can’t eat, I suspect that’s also a sign I’m not ready.

“All, right. You can stay for one more day, but only one more day. That’s the best we can offer. You’ll need to use that day for preparing to go home. Can you do that?”Yes. Okay. I understand. I will.

I do understand. I do. But even so, I don’t think I’ll be ready. At least they offered me one more day. One more day of safety from myself. One more day to breathe freely without fear that I’ll give up on life again. One more day to think about the thinking that led me to thinking that I needed to be in the hospital. One more day to accept the reality of life on the outside. One more day to steel myself for returning to the grief and loneliness. To return to the reality of pain and rejection. Of never-ending sadness. Of emptiness. Of hopelessness.

The Latest Time at a Different Place

The last time I was in the hospital, they sent me home before I was ready.
“We do things differently here. We won’t send you home until you’re ready.”But last time I was told I just had to get myself ready and I couldn’t stay any longer, even though I was afraid to go home.
“If you feel afraid to go home, then you’re not ready. We won’t send you home until you’re ready.”How will I know when I’m ready?
“You’ll know when you’re ready. We’ll know when you’re ready. We won’t kick you out, we promise. You can stay here until you’re ready.”Oh. Okay. Thank you.

Is it weird to say I cried when the doctors told me I wouldn’t be going home for a while? I cried from happiness. I cried from sadness. I cried from sheer exhaustion. I cried from releasing the fear I’d been carrying. The fear of having to return home too soon. Perhaps this time will be the last time if I’m able to stay for enough time to finally discover what ready looks and feels like. What ready actually means.

Like this:

hummingbird soundtrack
distant rumbling
thunder? no
train yards
impersonating summer squalls
alone
sunlight scented skin
quiet rustlings
dry leaves
red umbrellas
Patriot flags
poetry pages
flapping open
shut open shut open shut
in a passing breeze
suspended in time
between stillness and movement
warmth and cool nights
morning and forever
mourning and
open shut open shut open shut
life’s pages flap open shut
hints of fall
uncertain futures
one more lonely pass around the sun
dandelion wishes
daisy loves
and love-me-nots
vanish for another year
deep distant rumbling
thunder? no
shuddering moments of loss
the sun shines still
quiet and still
warms this sun-kissed
tear-stained
pink-skinned mammal
one more day

Charlotte. May I call you Charlotte?
Is it appropriate to be so familiar
with someone so profound?
You are not my friend.
You are my hero.
My mentor.
My inspiration.
You voice continues, even now, to speak
for the children’s sake
for Heaven’s sake
for the sake of all that’s holy.

What would you have done or said
in the face of assaults on nature
of melting ice caps
rising temperatures
shrinking glaciers
clearcut forests
dying bees?

You were ahead of your time
would you raise up a cry
as the natural world crumbled?
How can children walk
beneath trees and sky
when the trees are gone
clearcut for profits
and bottom lines?

Like this:

Yesterday, I found this in a notebook I kept about a year ago. Don’t even remember writing it. Must have been half asleep at the time? Such a nightmare vision that, unfortunately, has the potential to become reality in the not-so-distant future.

I don’t want to live in a world
of survivalists sitting on their
porches with guns across their laps
ready to shoot starving refugees
escaping from urban horrors as the
forests and ice caps die.

I felt saddened by being the end
of the genetic line of my ancestral
forefathers and foremothers knowing
the line stops here with my children
and their choices not to reproduce
which at first felt overwhelming, bleak.

But now, I wouldn’t want any future
descendants living in the world we
have been actively creating for the
future, a world without diversity, and
without balance, and possibly, eventually
without even life.

I have a growing sense that it’s time
for the human race to put our affairs
in order and prepare for a desolate
future without us, a future that belongs
to only whatever survives the coming
mass extinctions.

Like this:

who is mother tongue
who is father country
the collective
the source of identity
language moves from place to place
water, rain, flowing
can take things away from you
the assembly, monolithic
one language, one place, one overall
you have to give up things
in the land of the free?

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